The Office, Pt 3: Three More Things

The Office, Pt 3: Three More Things
October 1, 2010 5:30 AM -0500
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If we're going to experience real life, even at work, then we must know the key to unconditional contentment, make sure to observe a Sabbath of rest, and understand who we are in God's eyes. Find out how to do all of these.

Thesis: There are three more essential keys to having real life in the workplace: contentment, a Sabbath, and understanding our real identity.

Objective: Challenge believers to content themselves within their current circumstances, observe a time of rest, and embrace an identity which is independent from what we do.

  1. We must learn contentment (Philippians 4:12-13).
    1. We must acknowledge poverty (“I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty” (12); We must recognize that God's grace and our faith do not equate to earthly prosperity. We may be prosperous, or we may be absolutely impoverished, and still be square in the center of God's will for our lives.).
    2. The key is unconditional contentment (“I have learned the secret of being content in any situation” (12); The trick is that we must figure out how to be content. DEFINITION: content: in a state of peaceful happiness [resulting from a] satisfaction with a certain level of achievement, good fortune, etc., and not wishing for more.).
    3. We can through Him (13; The key to discovering that unconditional contentment is realizing that, whatever is good and right is possible with Jesus, regardless of our personal circumstances.).
  2. We must observe a Sabbath (Exodus 31:12-18).
    1. It's a sign (12-13; Observing a Sabbath of rest is a sign of our relationship with God and a practical demonstration of our desire to be like Him.).
    2. It's a big deal (14-17; Even though the observance of the Sabbath is the only of the ten commandments that's not repeated after Pentecost, it is absolutely clear that God considered – and considers – it a priority in the fact that He called it “holy” (i.e., key to our being like Him in holiness) twice and prescribed death and/or exile for its violation no less than three times in this passage alone.).
    3. It's a lasting thing (18; The Lord intended this to be a lasting ordinance for the Israelites and believers. Although the definition of Sabbath has been consistently distorted (), we must recognize that God Himself inscribed this command on two tablets of stone. It was an essential part of His covenant with His people.).
  3. We must embrace real identity (Psalm 139).
    1. We're not what we do (1-4; Though the psalm is written by David, it makes no mention of how he's a king. Rather, David acknowledges that God looks right through his title and job description to his very core, knowing every detail of his life from the inside out. God knows us not by our title or job description, but by “my every action (v 2a), my every undertaking (v 3a) and the manner in which I pursue it (v 3b), even my thoughts before they are fully crystalized (v 2b) and my words before they are uttered (v 4)” (Reflecting God Study Bible).).
    2. God is with us wherever (7-12; It doesn't matter where we go (or what we do), God is still there. He may be sadly shaking His head at what we're up to, but He's there, ready to receive us, equip us, empower us, fill us...).
    3. God created us (13-18; An essential key to our identity is that God doesn't know us because he met us and shook our hand, etc. He created us, knitting us together in our mothers' wombs, fearfully and wonderfully (and personally) assembling – even weaving – us and knowing, even before time began, exactly who we would be and all that we would do, ever.)
    4. We must invite intimacy with God (19-24; It's not enough to recognize that God knows us to our very core; we must want Him to know us to our very core, to chose to want what He wants more than anything else and invite Him to search us out and find and eliminate anything which is contrary to that.).

Ryrie

  • Exodus 31:12-18
    • (12-17) “The Sabbath was made a sign of God's unique relationship with Israel as His own people. The importance of this sign is seen in the insistence of later prophets that Sabbath-keeping was an indication of the spiritual condition of the people.”
    • (12-17) “The Sabbath served as a holy day and a day of rest for both man and animals, commemorating God's rest after the work of creation. [It] is the only one of the Ten Commandments not repeated after the day of Pentecost. The church made Sunday her day of worship (Acts 20:7), commemorating the resurrection of Christ.”
    • (14) “cut off by banishment or execution”
    • (18) This would be “fulfillment of the promise of 24:12”
    • (18) “finger of God refers to His power or Spirit.”
  • Philippians 4:12-13
    • (12) “In these opposite circumstances, Paul was in the will of God. Lack is not necessarily a sign of God's disfavor, nor plenty of His approval.”
  • Psalm 139
    • “This psalm focuses on four great attributes of God: His knowledge of all things (vv 1-6), His presence everywhere (vv 7-12), His power in the formation of man (vv 13-18), and His holiness, which destroys evil men and searches the believer's heart (vv 19-24).”
    • (1) The word “searched” is “used of the careful scrutiny involved in mining operations and in exploring a country.”
    • (5) “hem me in” “may mean that there is no escape from God's omniscience, or it may signify His knowledge protecting us.”
    • (6) “God's omniscience surpasses human ability to comprehend it.”
    • (8) “Even the abode of the dead is not apart from God's omnipresence.”
    • (9) “There is no escape from God's presence ven if one could fly from east (dawn) to west (farthest part of the Meditteranean Sea).”
    • (12) “God's all-seeing eyes can penetrate even the darkness.”
    • (13) The word “create” here is interesting in that it means that God acquired us not by purchase, but by creating us.
    • (15) “in the depths of the earth” is “an allusion to the womb, as mysterious as the netherworld.”
    • (16) “unformed body” is a “reference to the embryo.”
    • (16) “The last part of the verse means that the days of David's life were written in God's book, affirming God's prior knowledge and plan of everything in David's life.”
    • (24) “way everlasting” “stands in contrast to the way of the wicked, who will perish.”

Reflecting God

  • Exodus 31:12-18
    • (13) “Instructions for building the tabernacle and making the priestly garments are concluded by impresing on the Israelites the importance and necessity of keeping the Sabbath even while carrying out this special task.”
    • (14) To be cut off from Israel was to be “removed from the covenant people by execution or banishment.”
    • (16-17) “In her rhythm of work and rest in the service of God, Israel is to emulate God's pattern in creation as an ever-renewed sign of the covenant.”
    • (16-17) “A covenant sign was a visible seal and reminder of covenant commitments.”
    • (18) “In keeping with ancient Near Eastern practice, these [two tablets] were duplicates of the covenant document. One copy belonged to each party of the covenant. Since Israel's copy was to be laid up in the presence of her God, both covenant tablets were placed in the ark.”
  • Philippians 4:12-13
    • (12) It is an ironic thing that “prosperity, too, can be a source of discontent.”
    • (13) “everything” in this case refers to “everything pleasing to God”
    • (13) “Union with the living, exalted Christ is the secret of being content and the source of Paul's abiding strength.”
  • Psalm 139
    • Psalm 139 “is a prayer for God to examine the heart and see its true devotion. Like Job, the author firmly claims his loyalty to the Lord. Nowhere (outside Job) does one find expressed such profound awareness of how awesome it is to ask God to examine not only one's life but also his soul – God, who knows every thought, word and deed, from whom there is no hiding, who has been privy even to one's formation int eh dark concealment of the womg. The thought progresses steadily in four poetic paragraphs of six verses each.
    • (1-6) “God, you know me perfectly, far beyond my knowledge of myself: my every action (v 2a), my every undertaking (v 3a) and the manner in which I pursue it (v 3b), even my thoughts before they are fully crystalized (v 2b) and my words before they are uttered (v 4).”
    • (5) The point of the hemming in is to keep me under scrutiny.
    • (5) The point of laying His hand on my is to keep me from escaping.
    • (6) “Yours is a 'wonder' knowledge, beyond my human capacity – the Hebrew term regularly applies to God's wondrous acts.”
    • (7-12) “There is no hiding from you – here no abstract doctrine of divine omnipresence but an awed confession that God cannot be escaped.”
    • (8) The heavens and the depths represent the two extremes of the vertical scale.
    • (9) We have the extremes of the horizontal spectrum, the east and the west.
    • (9) “Using a literary figure in which the totality is denoted by referring to its two extremes (merism), vv 8-9 specify all spatial reality, the whole creation.”
    • (13-16) “You yourself put me together in the womb and ordained the span of my life before I was born.”
    • (13) “The Hebrew for the this verb (created) is the same as in Ge 14:19, 22; Pr 8:22, not as is in Ge 1:1, 21, 27.”
    • (13) “inmost being” is literally “kidneys,” which was a Hebrew idiom representing “the innermost center of emotions and of moral sensitivity – that which God tests and examines when he 'searches' a person.”
    • (14) “You know me as the One who formed me, but I cannot begin to comprehend this creature you have fashioned. I can only look upon him with awe and wonder – and praise you.”
    • (15) “secret place … depths of the earth” The “reference is to the womb: called 'the secret place' because it normally conceals, and it shares with 'the depths of the earth' associations with darkness, dampness and separation from the visible realm of life. Moreover, both phrases refer to the place of the dead, with which on one level the womb appears to have been associated: man comes from the dust and returns to the dust, and the womb is the 'depth'-like place where he is formed.”
    • (18) “When I awake” - “The sleep of exhaustion overcomes every attempt to count God's thoughts/works, and waking only floods my soul once more with the sense of the presence of this God.”
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